Posted by Ask a Manager
https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/my-boss-watches-me-by-video-call-while-i-work-tubs-of-butter-are-taking-up-all-the-room-in-our-tiny-fridge-and-more.html
https://www.askamanager.org/?p=30671
I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.
1. My boss watches me by video call while I work
I’m a 100% teleworker in the research field, which I love. The problem is my boss believes mentoring me means watching me via video call as I work.
I’ve asked my boss to stop (firmly but nicely) and reported it to my boss’s supervisor who was horrified. Even our supreme boss stepped in, but not much has changed. She has lessened up slightly but now complains she can’t mentor me right because of my “complaining.”
Any advice on how to reinforce some boundaries? Is this just a typical part of remote work? I’m a trailing spouse, so I’m job hunting but it takes quite a while for me to find anything even somewhat related to my field.
Noooo, this is not normal in remote work. This is really f’ing weird, it’s terrible management, and it’s a huge waste of her time.
The good news is that her boss was horrified when you told her about it. She probably thinks that it’s stopped now that she addressed it, so you need to let her know that it hasn’t (and that not only is it continuing, but that now your boss is making snide comments about you having complained). Also, when you let her know it’s still happening, you might just ask if it’s okay for you to disable your web camera — so that when your boss confronts you about having done that, you can say, “Oh, (grandboss) told me to do that.”
Also, for the record, the conversation your grandboss should be having with your boss isn’t just “stop doing this, it’s horrifying” but also “let’s do some urgent and remedial training about how to manage effectively because clearly we are not on the same page about what that means and about how you should be spending your time.”
– 2019
Read an update to this letter here.
2. Tubs of butter are taking up all the room in our tiny fridge
I had no idea this would be the hill I wanted to die on, but here we are. In our office, on our floor we have a kitchen area with a small dorm-sized fridge. There are 13 of us in our little area although with part-time and working from home, six to 10 is more normal most days.
The bottom of the fridge is taken up by the office milk leaving two rather small shelves. Often people pop out at lunch and get some shopping and fill the fridge after lunch but at that point everyone has taken out their lunch and its mostly ok, although sometimes very difficult to shut.
The problem is the six full sizes tubs of margarine/butter. Seriously. Of 13 people, there are six of these. Sometimes five, but usually six. I first brought this up jokingly that this was ridiculous and a couple people defensively said they were sharing. This is a tiny fridge. With their six tubs and if I am not first in, I cannot put my lunch in the fridge. I have started bringing a cold bag or something that doesn’t need refrigeration. I mentioned that each tub is bigger than 1/13th of their share of the fridge and I just get “but I have toast in the morning.”
Sigh. I just think it’s so selfish and I’ve been as up front about it as I can think and people just do not see that a full sized tub is too big for a teeny shared fridge. I’m annoyed but not insane, this isn’t a management thing, but I would like to understand why their big tubs of margarine trump my lunch. You may just advise I take up meditation or up the martial arts training to channel my aggression but maybe you or the readers have a brilliant suggestion here to transform coworkers into sensitive space sharers? I really really like a cold Diet Coke.
Convince your office to buy a full-sized fridge (a dorm fridge for 13 people is way too small). Failing that, you could propose a butter club, where all the butter eaters chip in for a single tub of butter to share. (Or perhaps a butter club and a margarine club.)
But perhaps the best solution of all — butter keepers! They don’t go in in the refrigerator at all.
– 2019
Read an update to this letter here.
3. I cried at work and worry I missed something important when it happened
I screwed up at work. Thanks to reading your blog for so long, I was able to handle the screw-up immediately and appropriately to make things right. Fortunately, I was not fired for the offense, although I was given a formal write-up. During the write-up, I sat up straight, looked my boss and grand-boss in the eyes, and held my head up — basically, I realized this was business and not personal, instead of cowering or running away as I would have previously in my career. They were both respectful and professional during the meeting, expressing what happened, what went wrong, addressing that it was corrected immediately, expectations going forward, and how they would both me helping me to move forward. I appreciate being given another chance, in addition to being soberingly humbled by my mistake.
However, I started crying in the meeting. I’ve never cried at this job before. My boss and grand-boss ignored the tears, continued to treat me with respect, and the meeting wrapped up (it was almost over). Unfortunately, I don’t remember what was said to me during the time I was crying. I was trying so hard to keep control over myself and maintain myself, I lost focus on the discussion. I know what I did wrong and how to move forward from it positively, and I’m not concerned it is going to haunt me or be held over my head unreasonably.
So, do I need to go back and tell them I missed part of it? I remember hearing my grand-boss expressing disappointment on a professional level. But I don’t know what else he said for another 3-7 minutes. I don’t know if the rest was professional feedback, I don’t know if it was instruction on how to make amends to the client, I don’t have any clue what it was. What do I do? And if I have to go back and say I didn’t hear him, HOW do I say that?
If you think there’s any chance that you missed instructions or something else important, then yes, go back and correct that! All you have to say is, “I really appreciated you talking to me about the X situation the other day. Because I was stressed by the situation, I want to be absolutely sure that I didn’t miss any action items for me, particularly from the end of the conversation when my stress was at its highest. Can I confirm with you my plan for moving forward and make sure this sounds comprehensive to you? I plan to do X, Y, and Z. Is there anything I missed?”
Or, you can be even more straightforward about it, replacing that second sentence with, “I’m sure you noticed I got a little emotional toward the end of the meeting. My apologies — it was a stressful situation, but I really appreciated how you handled it. I want to be realistic that getting emotional toward the end may have diluted my focus and I want to be sure I didn’t miss anything I should have taken away.”
And don’t be too mortified. People sometimes cry in serious meetings about mistakes. It happens! Your boss and grand-boss have probably seen it before. As long as you handle it professionally now, it should be fine.
– 2019
4. I was rejected because the employer thought I wouldn’t do well in a small start-up
I am from a large multinational company but was just recently rejected from a small start-up company and received the email below. I seemed to impress them but was rejected, and the hiring manager wanted to “stay in touch.” I don’t get it. I’ve been feeling down about this, and I just keep sulking over it. Please help provide any insight and what this really means. What did I do wrong?
This is the email: “Hi Jane. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and appreciated your taking time to come by the office. We love your portfolio and experience. In particular your process and analysis skills are some of the best we have seen! As much as we’d love to add you to our team, we feel the move from such a big company like X to such a small operation as ours will be a tough transition and your skills would much better serve a business that has already reached some scale. I encourage you to connect with me on LinkedIn and I would like it if we could stay in touch. I wish you the very best in your job search!”
I would take it at face value: They think you’re great, and they also think you won’t thrive in a small operation like theirs. That could mean anything from “We’re still figuring things out and we need someone entrepreneurial who’s comfortable setting up systems from scratch and working with a tiny budget, and we don’t think that’s where you’d shine” to “Because we’re small, we’d need you wearing 100 different hats here, pitching in on things like reception duty and inventory, and we don’t think you’d love that — and even if you say you’d be fine with it, we’re not willing to take the risk that we’re right” to all sorts of other things. In other words, think of all the reasons someone might not thrive in a small start-up when they’re used to a huge company, and there are your possible answers.
People get rejected for jobs all the time because while they’re qualified in many ways, they’re not quite the right fit in other ways. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong; it just means hiring is about lots of things beyond just your actual skills.
– 2019
The post my boss watches me by video call while I work, tubs of butter are taking up all the room in our tiny fridge, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/my-boss-watches-me-by-video-call-while-i-work-tubs-of-butter-are-taking-up-all-the-room-in-our-tiny-fridge-and-more.html
https://www.askamanager.org/?p=30671
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